At the moment the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. uttered those now-famous words, on an April evening in 1968, a teenage girl sat at her nearby home in Memphis, Tenn., disconsolate.

She had yearned to see King speak, but there had been a bomb threat against the civil-rights leader. So Carrie May Golden’s mother made her stay away.

The next day, King was assassinated.

More than 40 years later, Golden sat in a London theater, watching “The Mountaintop” — a play about that final night in King’s life, written by her daughter, Katori Hall. When the character of a maid named Camae — short for “Carrie May” — took the stage, Golden had a very vocal reaction.

“She freaked out because she had forgotten I named the character after her,” Hall recalls with a laugh. “It was in a moment where there was nothing funny happening in the play, so people didn’t understand why this lady was (making such a scene).”

“The Mountaintop,” which is about to have its local premiere at San Diego Repertory Theatre, has that habit of provoking reactions, even among people not so close to the work. The play became a minor sensation after its London debut, winning Britain’s Olivier Award as best new play in 2010.

The next year, it moved to Broadway for a splashy U.S. premiere, starring Angela Bassett as Camae and Samuel L. Jackson as King.

“The Mountaintop,” set in Room 306 of Memphis’ Lorraine Motel — the place where King would be shot as he stood on a balcony the next day — centers on imagined conversations between the young maid and the passionate but beleaguered preacher and civil-rights hero.

The play takes some surprising turns, venturing into something like magical realism. But what has raised a few hackles is the fact that it portrays King as very human — insecure, even frightened at times, although not afraid to use some profanity.

King’s own daughter Bernice, while praising the piece, said in one interview that “I just don’t think Daddy spoke that way.”

But it wouldn’t be like Hall to worry about such concerns. The playwright, at 31 one of the hottest names among emerging theater artists, has demonstrated a distinctive voice and fearless spirit with such works as “Hurt Valley” and “Hoodoo Love” (staged last year at San Diego’s Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company).

She says that while “as a black writer, you are shouldered with this responsibility to bring your race forward,” she believes her first duty is to the stories she feels compelled to tell.

“I don’t write underneath anyone’s gaze,” Hall says. “I don’t write underneath a white gaze or a black gaze or anyone else’s. I just always write what I want to write. And sometimes that gets me in trouble.

“People in the black community — not necessarily artists, they can be politicians or my parents — they’re like, ‘Why are you writing about black people in that way? Don’t you feel as though you could paint us in a good light?’

Fearless foray

Hall has found a kindred soul in Roger Guenveur Smith, who is directing “The Mountaintop” for the Rep.

Smith himself has a reputation for, as he puts it, “taking on the icon,” with warts-and-all solo shows about such prominent African-American figures as Huey Newton (for which he won an Obie Award) and Frederick Douglass. So he appreciates the authenticity of Hall’s writing voice.

“I think there’s an imaginative fearlessness which is remarkable,” Smith says of the playwright. “And I think it’s really wonderful that this is a young woman who is from Memphis, who was not even born when Dr. King was assassinated, but whose curiosity and sense of history led her to very imaginatively dig into probably the most compelling story in Memphis.”

Smith argues that “The Mountaintop” stands only to humanize the revered King, not tear him down.

“He is monolithic — literally, now that we have a monument,” says Smith, referring to the King memorial that was dedicated on Washington’s National Mall in 2011. “A brilliant man, a man from whom we can learn so much. But a man nonetheless.”

Smith notes that the reason King went to Memphis in the first place was to show solidarity with black sanitation workers who were on strike over job discrimination.

“The guys in the strike carried signs,” Smith says. “And the signs said, ‘I Am a Man.’ That’s kind of the directive for this piece.”

Larry Bates, who is playing King at the Rep (opposite Danielle Moné Truitt as Camae), says playing even an imperfect version of the icon can be intimidating.

“Those are large, large shoes to fill,” says Bates. “(But) the great thing about this play is you get to see a different side (of King).

“I’m honored to be playing him, but I’m not trying to live up to the man.”

Bates adds that Hall’s dialogue feels steeped in the story’s place and time.

“I grew up in the South — I grew up in Louisiana,” he says. “And I can tell you — and it’s the great thing about getting a piece by a good writer — the language sits with you when it’s right. (It’s) very authentic, very true.”

Moving forward

For all that the play has meant to her life and career, Hall says that if she were to write “The Mountaintop” now, “it would be absolutely, completely, totally different.”

“I wrote that play at a time in my life, and at a point in America’s history, when we were so infused with this optimism and this energy about the possibility of the first black president,” she says. “That’s totally different from where we are today.”

Although she can’t say exactly how the work would change, Hall says that “I have a few more gray hairs now, so it would be a little bit more cynical.”

Still, Hall isn’t spending too much time looking back. As she spoke, she was preparing for a trip to Africa, where she planned to research a new play (part of a trilogy) about the Rwandan genocide.

“We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. … And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”